SF and the deeper layers

I've been thinking about Science Fiction.  As you do.  Specifically about just what tremendous fun "Guardians of the Galaxy" was.  I've found myself, since then, trying to figure out why it worked so well, given that a lot of the ingredients had the potential to be solid cheese (ugh, bad metaphor there, sorry!). 

It's partly the fact that I confess I went along with not-very-high expectations.  I don't normally read comic books, and haven't done since I was about ten.  So I had no idea who Star Lord, Gamora et al are, and no investment whatsoever in what happened to them.  I'd seen one trailer that made the whole thing look like standard loud, entertaining, switch-off-your-brain twaddle in the vein of "Transformers" or "Godzilla".  It sounded good fun, though, and I love my SF, so I was happy to go when the DipGeek suggested it.

And of course it's got a good deal more going for it than any "Tranformers" movie ever made.

Should I say "spoiler alert!" at this point, I wonder?  Surely anyone who reads this blog knows I love my SF; surely if you do too, you will have gone to see this cracking film by now.  But if you haven't yet, be aware that this is not a spoiler-free zone.

GotG does have some weaknesses; notably, the two female characters are distinctly short-changed in terms of character development.  I spent quite a while waiting for the moment we'd discover Gamora was double-crossing everyone; only to find she wasn't.  She really had decided to turn spontaneously into a goodie after around five minutes' screen time.  There wasn't really much nuance, much less background story, to her decision that working for a would-be genocidal murderer wasn't to her liking or her conscience.  I mean, it's an understandable decision; but one still likes to have the backstory even so.  She came off better than her adopted sister Nebula, though, who literally has nothing to do but pout and growl, before going headlong into her one spectacular fight scene. 

As a woman, of course, I know I ought to be too-much enraged by this to accord the film's good points my attention.  But said good points were legion; and although it was done a little hastily, Gamora was given a chance to be more than a high-kickin' cliche Strong Woman, too.  She had self-confidence and a sense of humour, moments of anger and confusion, and a generosity to the other characters that was shown to spring from comradeship rather than romantic interest in anyone.  This is all progress.  Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is equal representation.

Speaking of progress, I loved the way Peter Quill was treated as easily as much eye-candy for the audience as Gamora was.  Yea!  It turns out Chris Pratt strips rather well.  You'll find no objections here to a little gender equality in the objectification stakes.

But more importantly than all this trivia, I've been wondering about why it is that the Marvel films get it right, when so much good-fun SF doesn't.  Good-fun SF is good fun - and I like my good fun; but sometimes it's a genre that can go so much deeper than fun.

I think part of it is the fact they take themselves seriously, but in a very specific way.  There's no pretence that the themes are serious; we aren't meant to be getting seriously worked up about the possibility of an invasion of Dark Elves or Chitauri.  It's just an action plot.  There's no assumption that the characters need to be serious and po-faced about things, either, indeed far from it.  There are plenty of jokes, and the characters are treated lightly.  They're allowed to have a sense of humour and to laugh at one another and themselves.  But the humour isn't shoe-horned in; it derives from who these people are and how they relate to one another and to their world.  In other words, it's like a lot of the humour in my life and yours, which makes it real and grounding, instead of an irritating phony fiction trope - "Oh, in this kind of story the characters always make one-liners, so ours must too".  Things are witty and sparklingly light, but not camped up, and the humour is not played as the scriptwriters tongue-in-cheek laughing at the audience and at themselves for pandering to them, but as a recognisable part of the behaviour of real people.

There are plenty too of what I understand are known as Easter Eggs - which, bear in mind, would be called "prefigurings" and "motifs" if we were in the land of Literary Fiction (& that leads me to another thing I get exercised over, namely the cultural snobbery of dismissing certain genres, like SF, as being inherently of lesser worth than certain other genres like LitFic, when they are nothing of the bloody kind, even while holding to a doctrine of cultural relativism and "no such thing as high and low art"; but I'll leave that for now, since I'm trying not to ramble here).  Existing fans will pick up on these prefigurings and inside-jokes straight-away, and will know all their subtle possibilities, but newbies like me can still get plenty from them too, because they're always introduced with a certain care.

I think that care is part of the secret.  Marvel take care.  They appear genuinely to love their material.  They choose their scriptwriters and directors with care, they obviously put an enormous amount of spadework into getting perfect casting, and they take care of their stories.  They seem to want to please both the new fans and the long-standing ones, and to be prepared to put in some effort to try and achieve this.

And on the seriousness front, they're prepared to take the risk of going beyond the thinness of a quick-and-easy comic-book characterisation, and drawing on something rather deeper.  Look at the Marvel heroes who've popped up so far in the MCU; there's a strange resonance to their activities and emotions.  They're like Wagner's characters or those of Tolkein; they are like fairy-tale characters and biblical characters and the characters we meet in our night-time dreams.  They're archtypes, or blends of them.

We've got the True Hero, the Reluctant Hero, the Wounded Hero, the Seeker Hero and so on.  We've got the Right-Hand-Man, we've got the Outsider.  We have Brothers Who Are Eternal Enemies, who are also the Trickster and the Honest Man.  We have the Warrior Woman and the Wise Woman and the Fallen Woman Redeeming Herself (one could easily see Natasha Romanoff as a Brunnhilde/Kundry fusion, for example).  We've got some Fallen Heroes, trying to redeem themselves, too.  We even have Sleeping Beauty, for goodness sakes', in fact we've got a couple of them - and Sleeping Beauty No 1 is also the Wounded Hero, and Sleeping Beauty No 2 is both the Wounded Hero and the Fallen Hero. 

And then this morning I open facebook and find that DipGeek has sent me a link to a fascinating article pointing out another interesting resonance to the films of the MCU, and especially GotG.  You can find said article here; it's well worth a read, and I agree with the author (and not just on the fact that "Firefly" is some of the best SF ever).

The other main thing that has been going on here this morning was rain, and plenty of it.  That's now eased off, and been replaced by wind, and plenty of that.  So I'm just going to get myself a cup of tea and a bite of lunch, and then I shall spend the rest of this afternoon writing.  I have, as usual, a string of half-finished projects.  I want to make some headway, and I've picked one to try and finish, so I'm going to work on the western.

Enjoy the rest of Sunday, wherever you are!

A good weekend (just briefly)

I have had a good and a constructive Saturday, and a slightly less constructive Sunday. 

Saturday, I ran the washing machine, had croissants, nectarines and decent coffee for breakfast, did some random shopping, had lunch out, did some more sorting and tidying at home, cleaned the bathroom, had a nice cool shower and a good supper, watched "Serenity" and went to bed.

Today I completely failed to do a software-related thing online that involves knowing what you are doing and what software you're running.  I am a pig-ignorant hick and know neither, so I got nowhere.  Then I had a long depressing telephone conversation with my mother, who is having some very unpleasant leg problems, and after a late lunch came a somewhat better afternoon.  I stuck my creative cap on and hauled it down firmly over my ears, and got some writing done.  Not very much (maybe 1500 words in the end) but that's a lot more than nowt.  I also mucked about on tumblr and facebook and looked through Fantastic Mrs Fox's lovely photos of the Chap Olympiad (which looks a lot more fun than the real thing, I must say).  And now I'm off to bed again. 

Shiny. 

In which I discover "The Unusuals" and prove that I am putty (in certain hands...)

It’s odd, the things having a crush makes one do (oh yes, they make me.  Honest.  I can’t resist, I’m putty in the hands of my urges.  Ahem). 

So, anyway - I bought a Dvd boxed set.  Not a big one - all of two discs.  Just ten episodes; that’s so sad.  But at least now I understand what the fuss was about, and why someone described this to me as the police procedural equivalent of “Firefly”.  It’s a good analogy.  Not only because both were shot down in flames after just one series, but in terms of quality as well.

When the Dipgeek introduced me to “Firefly”, also on Dvd, it took about fifteen minutes for me to be hooked, whereas this took the whole of episode 1.  This makes sense; I adore science fiction, I’m mostly neutral towards police procedurals.  In “Firefly”, the opening battle looked good; then the titles were terrific, the dialogue was great, the ship’s engineer was not a brawny bloke but a lass, yay! - and with the brilliant sequence on Persephone the “grab Im” process was complete.  I became a devoted Browncoat and have not deviated since.

With this, the key moments were the fact that at the first introduction of the character played by Crush Of The Moment, he’s cooking – that’s a big yay! for me, unrepentant foodie that I am (plus it creates the need for regular close-ups of his gorgeous hands, which is definitely a Good Thing - I would happily be putty in those hands).  Then, there’s the presence of the ever-excellent Harold Perrineau; the fact that our heroine is a jolie-laide rather than a tv-style beauty – i.e. she looks like a human being, not a shop-window dummy; and the way that the touches of humour are so lightly-handled and kept character-based.  But it wasn’t until the end of the first episode that I realised that, ever so quietly, I had been hooked and landed.  I was looking forward to some more, and thinking grumpily “Why are there only ten episodes?  What berk made that decision?” – and then I knew that this wasn’t simply going to be a piece of Renner-Porn but a real find.

Honestly, there a must be some very silly people working in executive-decision-making posts in television.    Why would anyone intelligent choose to keep churning out some of the drivel that clogs tele screens all over the developed world (naming no names – after all, tastes in drivel vary), and yet scrap “Firefly” and “The Unusuals”??  Can no-one ever take a well-worn trope and do with it something just a wee bit fresh and different?  Why can’t a television series be primarily character-driven, rather than ever-more-hysterically plot-contrivance-driven?  What are they so scared of? – actually entertaining us?

TV EXECUTIVE MORONS.   

Cultural snobbery versus cultural relativism

I was on the ‘phone yesterday evening and got my head bitten, a little. I had remarked on what I was doing when the ‘phone rang. It didn’t please the friend calling; she was a bit disgusted, in fact; apparently I was letting her down, or letting the side down, or letting my standards slip, or something.

I had got home and had a cup of tea, and folded (badly, and slowly, needless to say!) some washing. Then I had supper: reheated Waitrose vegetable frittata, garlic bread and cherry toms, followed by some yoghurt. And I settled down to enjoy my dvd of “An American in Paris” and a bag of lychees. The ‘phone went just as Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron were dancing to “Our Love is here to Stay” by the banks of the misty Seine. Grr. I remarked that I was busy, explained what with when I was asked; and then got told off, in a mild sort of way - for watching a “corny Hollywood musical” instead of something “worthwhile”.

Worthwhile!! I think light-hearted romantic exuberance is worthwhile, thanks very much! I think fun is worthwhile; and Gene Kelly’s dancing is certainly worthwhile.

But I’m afraid I wriggled out of arguing my point of view, using my arm as an excuse – “I broke my wrist, I’m entitled to watch what you consider to be slush” was the gist of it. I’m not proud of that. Because I should have stood up and blasted away.

I do not think of myself as a post-modernist; I do think there are greater and less great works of art and of culture. It isn't all one completely level field, a tin can of equal value to the "Virgin of the Rocks". But greatness isn't everything; I think almost all of it has its place in the world, goddammit. What Hollywood does well, it does supremely well. What Katherine Jenkins does well, she does supremely well. What Ursula Le Guin does well, she does supremely well. I watch Satyajit Ray and Kurosawa films, too; I listen to Jussi Bjorling singing Verdi and Favourite Baritone singing Schubert; I read George Elliott, I read A S Byatt. But I enjoy the other stuff too, and I cannot agree that it is rubbish. I will not be ashamed of liking “Firefly”. Don’t tell me that entertaining films, light music, and Science Fiction are no good because they are not “high art”. Don’t tell me that my enjoyment of “Strictly Come Dancing” means my appreciation of an evening at the Royal Ballet is tainted somehow. I appreciate them both, for their different qualities; one is great fun and often fascinating, the other is dazzling, moving and thrilling; each has its place and I have the right to love them both.

I’m not just talking about the fact I have personal tastes; I’m talking about everyone’s right to have personal tastes in the first place. The right to have them, and the right to express them in public without being sneered at. What gives some people the right to judge and condemn the cultural values of others? That is high art/currently fashionable/politically acceptable; and this is not… Says who? There is always someone holding themselves up as an arbiter of taste, belittling what doesn’t fit their criteria of class, worth, or acceptability, and they have no more authority to do so than I. I've grumbled about this before and I expect I'll grumble about it again. Down with cultural snobbery.

Ah, bitter chill it was (not)...

Last night was St Agnes Eve. I forgot to put herbs in my shoes. Nonetheless, I dreamed.

I dreamed I was having my first physiotherapy session, post-cast-removal, and it was going well, and the physiotherapist was pleased and I was incredibly happy. My wrist was regaining flexibility with each stretch, and my hand was regaining grip and precision control. Then I dreamed that I was walking beside a large lake with a certain ballet dancer and two of the characters from "Firefly"; we were having a nice, funny, intelligent conversation, and it was raining. I have to put the latter down to old-fashioned wishful thinking (and a bad attack of Crushia saltator); the earlier part I'll hope and pray was indeed the foretelling dream St Agnes is meant to give. I want my hand back.

Grateful Monday

I seem to have done a lot of grumbling lately. My arm hurts, it’s cold, my gnocchi are mouldy, I’m afraid of falling over… Wah wah wah. What a whinger.

So I am declaring this to be Grateful Monday, and am not going to moan. Surely I can manage that, for one day at least? Here instead are some things I am thankful for.

I have some very lovely colleagues, and even lovelier friends, and a bloody wonderful family, all of whom have been unfailingly kind and patient with me since early December. They have helped me, carried things for me, given me lifts, made me tea, cooked me supper, plied me with alcohol, commiserated with me, encouraged me, and just let me know I’m not alone. I know some great people. I love them all, and I am so blessed that they all love, or at least genuinely like, me. I’m a lucky dog.

Thinking of which, I met a truly gorgeous dog this morning, on my way to the bus stop. Schnauzer cross, perhaps? – short and wiry and particoloured, with chestnut chin whiskers and a “What’s in there? Who’s this? What’s that? Look sharp!” expression on his bright little face. His owner looked as tired and bored as he looked alert and alive - I hope she grows into being like her dog and not the other way around (with the exception of the hefty ‘tache, which probably suits him better than it would her). He was so full of beans, bounding along on a Monday morning, interested in everything; just being eyed up by him gave me a boost.

Another thing I am grateful for, besides my dear circle of friends and family (and the delight of watching other people’s dogs) is my dvd player. That was a good buy; one of those expensive purchases that really do make life better, rather than it rapidly becoming clear that they were a waste of money (my omelette pan is another; and the blender; and the electric blanket; and the radio). Thanks to the dvd player I have been able to spend the evenings when I was not out (ie, most of them) with quality entertainment in the form of movies, ballet, contemporary dance, opera, and the odd tv series. Too tired to type one-handed all evening, unable to draw, paint or sew, frustrated by the difficulty of holding a book and turning the pages, I have instead been entertained, enlightened, moved, scared and delighted by my dvd collection. I’ve cried over Christopher Bruce’s “Swansong”, flinched at “The Devil’s Backbone”, thrilled to a glorious production of “Aida” and marvelled at the wonder that is “Some like it Hot”. I’ve letched after Brendan Fraser in “Blast from the Past”, worshipped Miyako Yoshida’s Sugar Plum Fairy, cried over the understated brilliance of “Shane”, wallowed in a compilation of past winners of the Cardiff Singers Competition, enjoyed the switch-off-your-brain sheer fun of “Viva la Diva!”, and discovered “Firefly”. Yep, pretty good stuff, all things considered.

I am also enormously grateful for living in a country with a free-at-point-of-demand national health service, and a hospital within half an hour of my home.

And on Friday I was able to get to Covent Garden to see MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet”; hurrah. It was an evening of slip-ups, actually; a weird squalling noise from one of the oboes, a mobile ‘phone going off somewhere; then Leanne Benjamin came down awkwardly from a lift in the Balcony Scene and put a hand down on the stage to keep from falling; and during Act Two Edward Watson landed badly from a jump and was visibly in trouble for several minutes. I couldn’t see exactly what had happened; it may be that his shoe was loose, rather than an injury, as he slipped offstage for a few minutes during one of the crowd dances and was fine when he came back. Despite all these little whoopses, however, it was an excellent evening out - and I was in tears by the end, which is surely the mark of a good “Romeo and Juliet”.